You might think climate change is a socialist hoax, your insurance company doesn’t
As extreme weather events intensify across Aotearoa New Zealand, insurers — not activists — are delivering the clearest warning yet about climate change. While right-wing politicians and media figures continue to dismiss global warming as a “socialist hoax,” insurance companies are quietly withdrawing cover, hiking premiums, and signalling a future where entire communities may become uninsurable.
Climate denial has become politically calcified
The Political Right in NZ be screaming climate change is a socialist hoax as the country spasms from the latest extreme weather events.
The Political Right are so desperate to convince you that human pollution is not super heating the planet to push us beyond tipping points that once breached represent an existential threat to us as a species that their favourite Hate Trolls were attempting to convince you that the tragic Mt Maunganui slips were caused by co-governance, not climate change…
…the denial by the Right has become politically calcified…
…Whatever the environmental problem is, the Right’s response is ‘More Cows! More Mining! No Co-Governance’.
How polluters fund climate denial in New Zealand
The Dark Ag money washes through the Taxpayers’ Union stable of clients to fund Groundswell and other astro turf organisations to manipulate your prejudices and anger and ignorance so you end up blaming the environmentalists NOT the polluters!!!
We are so easily manipulated by the Polluters in this country.
Insurance companies are already pricing in climate collapse
You might think climate change is a socialist hoax, but your insurance company sure as fuck doesn’t…
According to reporting by RNZ, AA Insurance has temporarily halted new home insurance policies in Westport due to flood risk.
Insurer temporarily halts new policies in Westport due to flood risk
A major insurance company has temporarily stopped offering new home insurance policies in Westport because of the town’s flood risk.
A climate change policy expert says AA Insurance’s decision will be the first of many, and is urging insurers to be transparent when they withdraw from an area.
RNZ
…this is the age of consequences and your denial means nothing.
this Hard Right Government has waged war on all environmental protections, have pushed fast track powers for polluters and produced a methane level that was a joke.
Let’s be clear, there ARE solutions to this but when so many ACT, NZF and National voters point blank refuse to accept or acknowledge that pollution is dangerously warming the planet from points of no return, then NOTHING can be achieved.
Climate change: Fronting up to managed retreat – Simon Wilson
Floods, cyclones, and the real cost of “business as usual”
- The cost to insurers of 2023’s Auckland Anniversary floods and Cyclone Gabrielle was initially estimated at more than $3.5 billion.
- More than 115,000 claims were lodged after the two natural disasters.
- Premiums for house, content and car insurance have soared over the past year – the cost of insuring a house increased six times faster than incomes for the year to March 2024.
…despite the claims by the Political Right that climate change is a socialist hoax and despite this Government amputating climate change budgets, and despite the polluter industry getting legislation re-written for them, DESPITE ALL THAT, catastrophic climate change continues escalating, the planet continues to melt and insurance goes through the roof.
The insurance retreat is already underway
The Helen Clark Foundation has been raising the alarm over insurance affordability in the face of climate change and her solution is a publicly funded insurance policy for flooding and far more mitigation and managed retreat…
New report warns of insurance crisis due to climate change; urges immediate action
A new report by the Helen Clark Foundation and engineering consultants WSP highlights a looming crisis for residential insurance in Aotearoa New Zealand. As climate-related extreme weather events escalate in frequency and intensity, ‘insurance retreat’ could leave thousands of properties unprotected.
An estimated 10,000 coastal properties in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin could become uninsurable by 2050 due to coastal erosion and inundation. Properties located in flood prone areas inland are similarly at risk.
The report – titled Premiums Under Pressure – How climate change will reshape residential property insurance, and what to do about it – finds that, without intervention, residential insurance premiums for flood prone properties will continue to rise steeply and become unaffordable for many, with insurers eventually expected to withdraw flood coverage altogether for the most at-risk properties.
Low-income households and communities will be disproportionately affected, with unaffordable premiums likely to leave many without coverage just when they need it most. This poses a serious social equity issue for the nation.
As insurers adopt ‘risk-based pricing’ due to climate change impacts, WSP Fellow and report author Kali Mercier says the thorny challenge facing policymakers is how to keep premiums accessible and affordable.
Climate change is no longer a science debate — it’s a culture war
…we are in denial about what climate change means and we are in denial over the speed with which the climate is fundamentally changing in ways that will make failing states implode.
We are not ready politically, socially or economically for the adaptation in front of us, especially with this climate denying Government.
But those insurance rates don’t lie no matter how much we want to pretend free market consumerism as usual is still possible on a burning planet.
This isn’t a science issue any longer because the fucking science is stalled, this is a culture war where resentful National, ACT and NZF supporters will no concede that the Left is right about climate change.
These climate deniers would rather go under than admit the Left was right — and they are dragging the rest of the country down with them.
Climate Change is no longer about science, it’s a culture war staging ground.
Climate storms are here , will happen more often and increase in severity. The sheer disaster one after another will dominate our existence for the rest of the century and beyond.
We either adapt or face our current way of life is over.
People who think climate change is a socialist hoax are f’ing idiots, and just prove that evolution lacks equity.
When I visited the Shetland Islands five years ago, there was a plaque saying where you are now was on the equator billions of years ago. I imagine with all this shifting around, the climate changed many times…
Gee Thomas, that was a vacuous comment.
The political right will solve issues of climate while the left will run around in a mad panic
The only solving the political right are doing about climate change is the questions regarding it’s cause. They have deliberately increased the amount of carbon pollution so while NZ is small in regard to international emissions you can be sure that extreme climate events will increase here, people will have to leave high risk areas and your team will blame others for the problem. The left was trying to develop plans to deal with excess stormwater etc although because they wanted those being protected by the proposals to contribute to the cost for some strange reason you describe that as a mad panic.
If they do, it will be a first, Bob!
As we see clearly every day, they cause more problems than they solve.
They are the ones bereft of ideas.
They see the world and life in black and white because that’s the easy way to see things. You don’t have to think too hard.